Chris Ferric lives and works on Bunurong Country and Wurundjeri Country. They grew up on the floodplains of Tongala (Murray River) and Balaba (Broken Creek) in bushland of Bpangerang Nation. They were born in what English speakers now know as Japan, islands of living indigenous cultures Ainu and Uchinānchu. Ferric would like to offer a respectful acknowledgement to the Elders, past and present, of these places which they occupy and have occupied. While still trying to understand what the f*ck that means as a settler-colonial. Where they can be tools of liberation and collaboration, they humbly offer their charcoal and their brush.
Ferric’s larger-than-life-sized oil and metal-leaf works seek to amplify truth, beauty, and hopeful future visions. In 2025 they are the winner of the Midsumma & Australia Post Art Award, with their portrait of Jo Clifford. Other creative responses include body-casting with precious metal, hand-sculpting, digital projection, and a human-sized working chrysalis from discarded fabric for Snuff Puppets. They have drawn live on stage for Wicked Words, collaborated with audiences at Snuff HQ, drawn moving dancers and performers during development, and painted in the furniture section of Savers Footscray.
Under the Creative Victoria Creators Fund, Ferric spent 6 months developing methods to represent the diversity of disabled, queer and gender variant experiences within their work.
“And maybe the power of the picture comes from the fact that it is the creation of a queer/non-binary artist painting a queer/non-binary subject in a way that to me both references a queer artist of the past (El Greco), shines a light on a better future and acknowledges the power of both our presences in this present moment. I think it’s miraculous.” Jo Clifford
